Electronic documents are used in a variety of applications, including, for example and not limitation, web pages, electronic invitations and business cards that may be emailed or otherwise electronically transmitted to other parties, electronic publishing applications, and other software applications that allow user display and editing.
In many electronic document editing applications, the environment is a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSISYG) environment in which what is displayed to the user in the editing environment is substantially what the final electronic document will look like. For example, in a website building application, a web page may be displayed to a user with controls that allow the user to edit portions of the page that will later be published (in non-editable form) to a website.
While it is desirable to allow experienced website builders to have nearly complete control over the format and editing of the web page, this type of control requires a more complicated user interface which in turn requires significant learning investment on the part of the user, and also does not prevent a less experienced user from violating what may be considered by the design industry as “good” design principles.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an electronic document editing environment that has a simple user interface and allows some user control in positioning elements relative to one another yet enforces “good” design principles.